Page:Rudyard Kipling's verse - Inclusive Edition 1885-1918.djvu/416

"Ung—hath he slept with the Aurochs—watched where the Mastodon roam?
"Spoke on the ice with the Bow-head—followed the Sabre-tooth home?
"Nay! These are toys of his fancy! If he have cheated us so,
"How is there truth in his image—the man that he fashioned of snow?"

Wroth was that maker of pictures—hotly he answered the call:
"Hunters and fishers and trappers, children and fools are ye all!
"Look at the beasts when ye hunt them!" Swift from the tumult he broke,
Ran to the cave of his father and told him the shame that they spoke.

And the father of Ung gave answer, that was old and wise in the craft,
Maker of pictures aforetime, he leaned on his lance and laughed
"If they could see as thou seest they would do what thou hast done,
"And each man would make him a picture, and—what would become of my son?

"There would be no pelts of the reindeer, flung down at thy cave for a gift,
"Nor dole of the oily timber that comes on the Baltic drift;
"No store of well-drilled needles, nor ouches of amber pale;
"No new-cut tongues of the bison, nor meat of the stranded whale.

"Thou hast not toiled at the fishing when the sodden trammels freeze,
"Nor worked the war-boats outward through the rush of the rock-staked seas,